Why do India's farmers keep clashing with the Modi government? | About That

for a few weeks now farmers in India have been converging outside the capital with a message for the government they represent a very powerful very vocal very frustrated group their clashes with police have been violent even deadly they've burned Effigies of Narendra Modi and his ministers dozens of barricades have been set up container walls have been erected the idea is to stop these Farmers from reaching Delhi this is actually the second time in just a few years Farmers have de ended on Deli

in a massive prolonged protest and they say the promises made from that last Clash haven't been fulfilled they want more money for their crops they want debts waved they want better pensions they say the government isn't listening the tension is one deriving deep from Deep distrust but what makes this such a persistent problem in India that the government can't afford not to solve and yet [Music] agriculture is by far the biggest sector in India about half the people in the country work in farmi

ng according to the World Bank in 2022 43% of the labor force there are some uh 260 million people working as Farm Workers in India compare that to the biggest agricultural producing countries in the world China the United States Brazil their farming labor forces don't come close but farming in India by comparison is inefficient you see a big part of India gaining independence from the British in the 40s was about empowering Farmers Land Reform give the people a way to make a living by giving th

em land so even today a lot of farming in India is family run small operations often less than two hectares that's maybe a couple of football fields a lot of farmers extremely small plots of land and because they can't achieve economies of scale they can't grow they can't modernize they live on a lot of subsidy programs the government provides for many farms 20% of their income could be subsidies from government electricity and water come cheaper across the country there's a government guarantee

to buy essential crops like wheat and rice they announced new prices every year for the different uh seasonal crops what's the FL price the government will promise so that if Farmers can't sell uh certain Staples on the open market that they can at least sell to the government and get an assured price this creates a few problems first that's an expensive safety net to prop up trillions of rupees a year that's billions of dollars not all of that food gets used approximately 40% of the food produ

ced in India is wasted every year due to an inefficient supply chain system and that's in a country where about 16% of the population is malnourished that's more than 200 million people meanwhile those subsidies that needed government support feeds a cycle this particular system incentivizes uh Farmers to grow just rice and wheat so uh just the lack of diversification is a problem so what you end up with is an industry employing nearly half the country but accounting for just 15% of the country'

s GDP productivity is low the yields per acre are low yields per worker are extremely low and they tend to vary enormously in a Continental Country of our size the country's prime minister has been working towards a new Direction Narendra Modi has promised to build a new [Music] India India is a developing country but it wants to turn the page past agriculture the aim of the super ambitious exercise was clear to turn India into a manufacturing Hub the goal is to make it much more manufacturing b

ut denus has not enabled that to happen now there have been huge investments in roads and infrastructure since Modi became prime minister India's national highway network has expanded more than 50% over the past 9 years approximately 50,000 km of new National highways have been it those are construction jobs and consider manufacturing Mod's philosophy summed up by his make in India campaign attract investment become a hub for creating and assembling things everything from engines and wind turbin

es to semiconductors and infin formula but it hasn't entirely panned out you see one of the main objectives in Mod's plan was to increase the manufacturing sector's portion of GDP from 14% % to 25 in a few years today they're still stuck at 14% they've made barely a dent despite a couple of pretty good reforms at the national level and at least part of this we can trace back to the grip agriculture maintains on the country I'll let Richard explain because again this huge pull by farmers and the

poor most day governments have to give away most of the electricity they produce so for a manufacture when you talk about in big cities having two or three hours of cuts a day and if you're outside the big cities you might have 12 hours of cuts a day that's unsustainable unsustainable and a big liability for a country trying to attract big industrial investment water is another good example scarce resource especially in the north which is relatively dry Farmers growing wheat and rice use incredi

ble amounts of water but for a manufacturer that needs water to operate you're stuck so if you don't build factories there are no factory jobs if there are no factory jobs you're probably working the farm this economy is in desperate need of pulling workers out of Agriculture but how do you pull workers out of Agriculture except by ensuring that you have labor intensive manufacturing growing and you have construction jobs growing which is what exactly what happened in China but now China is alre

ady there Vietnam is doing rather Well India is very far behind and trying to change the system last time Modi did that it led to this these farmers are here with a very clear and strong message for the Indian government they say they will block roads they will disrupt this government until those three controversial Farm laws are repealed back in 2020 the government passed three bills that were going to upend the farming industry the basic idea baby steps for government to get out of the farming

business give Farmers more power to sell their crops to private buyers outside the traditional system and the argument went lift farmer incomes and increase exports the measures allowed Growers to sell produce Beyond government regulated markets but Farmers worried this would mean the end of the subsidies and eventually those purchase guarantees on crops altogether Farmers unions called them the anti-farmer law we'll stay put until we get a written guarantee from the government that the minimum

price for our crops won't disappear that was also concerned that this would lead to corporatization of Indian agriculture in a much larger way than it has happened so far hundreds of thousands of farmers were camped around delh for more than a year protesting and you know what happened Modi backed down he repealed the laws and he is uh someone who sees himself as a strongman politician and very rarely makes political u-turns and that just gives you a sign of just how strong the farmer's voice e

nded up being so now there's a hope for the farmers that their demands are going to be fulfilled now since the farm laws are being repealed they're keenly aware of their ability uh to instill fear in politicians even politicians as popular as Narendra Modi but Farmers protesting now say not only have those demands not been met they have entirely new demands as well and a pretty clear message fix the industry you've got because India is going through this you know the slow transformation of a an

agricultural system where food security was the only goal and from there um the goals have changed just a month or so or so from now there will be a general election Modi and his BJP party really do not want the farmers and their complaints uh to document public discourse they do not want want to see those headlines of the anger from the farmers the images of tear guests being used and Unleashed against the [Music] [Music] farmers